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Balancing Privacy Rights and Facial Recognition Technology for Police

Some technology companies have been famously resistant to helping law enforcement (see Apple vs. FBI). On the other hand, many technology companies have aggressively sought to provide police with cutting-edge technology that helps solve crimes and protect citizens.

One such company is Amazon. Jeff Bezos’ retail giant that is more than just a retail giant. Amazon is also a technology service provider, delivering everything from web hosting to facial recognition software.

It is that latter offering that has the company under pressure from two seemingly disparate groups: the ACLU and the company's shareholders.

Recently, the ACLU teamed up with about a dozen and a half major Silicon Valley investors to petition Amazon to drop its Rekognition facial recognition system and “exit the surveillance business,” according to Engadget.com.

Amazon first began marketing Rekognition to law enforcement agencies back in 2016. The system — which Amazon says can “detect, analyze, and compare faces for a wide variety of user verification, people counting, and public safety use cases” — is in use in Florida and Oregon, with agencies from California and Arizona considering becoming customers.

The ACLU is primarily motivated by privacy concerns, especially with regard to individuals attending political protest rallies and other large-scale public gatherings (read: riots).

The shareholders are more interested in the potential for stock prices suffering from negative publicity around police use of the technology to electronically locate people.

Strange bedfellows, but okay, so be it.

“Amazon's product, Rekognition, has the power to identify people in real time, in photos of large groups of people, and in crowded events and public places,” the ACLU said in a statement accompanying its petition. “At a time when we're joining public protests at unprecedented levels, and discriminatory policing continues to terrorize communities of color, handing this surveillance technology over to the government threatens our civil rights and liberties.”

In a separate statement, the ACLU said, “Amazon’s size and power — and its nearly ubiquitous Amazon Web Services cloud system — make it easy for the company to offer its face surveillance software as a service for very little money, lowering the bar for even small-town police departments to track people going about their daily lives. App developers can also build easy-to-use face surveillance software for police using Rekognition.”

For its part, Amazon says that their facial recognition services allow law enforcement to easily integrate powerful image and video analysis into their investigative process.

There is too much upside to in facial recognition technology for law enforcement for it to be ignored.

Here’s the problem. Facial recognition software, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and other emerging technologies are the toothpaste that cannot be put back in the tube — the bell which cannot be un-rung.

Let’s say that Amazon’s investors successfully pressure the company to stop selling Rekognition to police. Within days, another provider will step in and grab the money that Amazon leaves on the table.

Nature hates a vacuum. A marketplace vacated by Amazon will draw the immediate attention of companies like SenseTime, D-ID, Cognitec, or countless others.

The solution is not to seek the elimination of new technology. The solution is to figure out reasonable and rational policies and procedures that strike a balance between public safety and personal privacy.

This is no easy feat, but it is not impossible.

Disruptive technologies present challenges for everyone — police administrators included. But such technologies also carry significant benefits not only for police, but for the citizens they are sworn to protect.

Sensible solutions to problems presented by everything from DNA to drones are achievable, as long as stakeholders with differing opinions and objectives are able to come together in conversation.

It’s time to figure out how law enforcement can best leverage facial recognition technology while also ensuring the privacy rights of innocent, law-abiding Americans.

Doug Wyllie has authored more than 1,000 articles and tactical tips aimed at ensuring that police officers are safer and more successful on the streets. Doug is a Western Publishing Association “Maggie Award” winner for Best Regularly Featured Digital Edition Column. He is a member of International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association (ILEETA), an Associate Member of the California Peace Officers’ Association (CPOA), and a member of the Public Safety Writers Association (PSWA).

Author

Doug Wyllie has authored more than 1,000 articles and tactical tips aimed at ensuring that police officers are safer and more successful on the streets. Doug is a Western Publishing Association “Maggie Award” winner for Best Regularly Featured Digital Edition Column. He is a member of International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association (ILEETA), an Associate Member of the California Peace Officers’ Association (CPOA), and a member of the Public Safety Writers Association (PSWA).

Doug Wyllie has authored more than 1,000 articles and tactical tips aimed at ensuring that police officers are safer and more successful on the streets. Doug is a Western Publishing Association “Maggie Award” winner for Best Regularly Featured Digital Edition Column. He is a member of International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association (ILEETA), an Associate Member of the California Peace Officers’ Association (CPOA), and a member of the Public Safety Writers Association (PSWA).

Technology

In two days, the Los Angeles Rams will square off in Atlanta against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LIII. Verizon has worked for two years to ensure that communications capabilities for the millions of people in that city—as well as the myriad public safety entities standing watch over the event—remain available at all times.

IDentify optimizes workflows for investigative teams. Teams can seamlessly manage and track case evidence associated with an investigation from one centralized location and apply status labels related to such evidence such as active, closed, or archived. Notes and case details such as case ID, department, officer ID, case description, location, and time, can be added to the case in IDentify.

As a technologist, it’s my opinion that agencies will soon be able to receive much more tactical/situational information from all active incidents, including verbal transmissions, without ever touching a communications device.

Oakland PD was an early advocate of Vievu body camera technology and has been using the company's products since 2010. The department currently has 775 cameras; most of them the Vievu LE3 model. Now the department is moving to upgrade all of its officers' cameras to the latest Vievu model, the LE5.

The traditional gelatin-silver image reproduction film process was a very stable imaging platform with reliable, repeatable characteristics; lighting was also more consistent. In digital photography, we have to contend with many more variables and different elements involved in producing the final image.

The emergence of simultaneous LMR and LTE capabilities, along with PTT apps on smartphones, tablets and WiFi-only devices, opens up a world of potential new products such as more robust phones for industrial use, dual- or triple-band radios with LTE phones built inside, possibly even with a USB port on the side for uploading data.

Every second of video that an officer’s camera records can be taken into evidence, providing a first-hand account of what took place during any interaction with a subject. The cameras provide the officer’s perspective on the incident unfettered by testimony and witness reports. Beyond that, departments can use the footage to train and practice crisis scenarios, reviewing successful arrests and discovering areas for improvement. Community members and law enforcement officers alike can benefit fro

IBM i2 Coplink uses sophisticated analytics and "fuzzy" searches to allow investigators to discover hidden relationships and patterns that can be used to solve crimes. Geospatial mapping features in the software can quickly create maps, highlighting types of incidents such as arson, burglaries, or prowling by specific dates or times of day, and location.

Through its bait program using Assisted Patrol-equipped devices, Dayton arrested and convicted four individuals who had been arrested for a total of 45 felonies and theft from automobiles in the downtown precinct decreased by 80%for over one year. These results were achieved without stakeouts and with no overtime expenses.

Pulling data from law enforcement records can be difficult, which is why an analytics software platform could be key to promoting relationships with the community. With a map-based tool, agencies can analyze their crime and calls-for-service data to create geographical profiles to see where crimes are being committed and reported. With these profiles, agencies can better see where officers need to be more visible and to interact with the community as a crime prevention tactic.

There’s a chat-bot out there that knows what dialog to use to elicit the right information from the predator to get an identification and conviction. So maybe in the not too distant future, cyber detectives will not have to make their own undercover profiles and spend hours chatting with sexual predators.